10th ANNIVERSARY OF RECOGNITION OF BRITISH SIGN LANGUAGE

That this House joins the British Deaf Association, the Royal Association for Deaf People and Signature in celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Government's official recognition of British Sign Language (BSL) on 18 March 2003; notes that BSL is used by many thousands of deaf people as their first or preferred language alongside English; further notes that BSL users still find it hard to access health, education and other services as well as employment due to a lack of public awareness and interpreters; further notes that some good work is being done by different Government departments to support BSL users but that this is piecemeal and not co-ordinated; urges the Government to renew its efforts in this direction in 2013; and calls on the Government to prepare a short, cross-departmental report which pulls together all that it is currently doing to support BSL users and to identify the barriers that still remain to BSL users' full participation in, and contribution to, British society.